Wafer manufacturing giants tape out a new, larger wafer platform for the future.

Three major players in integrated circuit manufacturing -- Samsung Electronics, Intel Corporation, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) -- have made the announcement of an agreement for a new, even larger wafer production standard. The current wafer plants crank out 300mm discs, but going forward, the three companies feel that the need for another graduation in area is necessary. They will also work with International Sematech to insure a viable set of standards for the new wafers.

Though TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer, has recently entered into an agreement with two other Taiwanese chip makers to build $14.7 billion worth of new 300mm fabs, the idea of further progress and efficiency for the future has not been brushed aside. Moving from the current 300mm to the planned 450mm platters will save more money, more energy and cause less pollution overall, as well as allow the industry to pile more microchips into a single wafer.

The last standards change for wafer manufacturing was in 2001, when production was transitioned from the 1991-originated 200mm to the present 300mm discs. The trio plan to have the new standard and fabs online by 2012, making the transitions nearly a decade apart each.

Not only will the larger wafers allow manufacturers more overall efficiency in the fabs, with the ever-falling footprint of transistors, almost exponentially more microchips should come from each wafer. Intel recently moved from a 65nm to 45nm architecture, while TSMC moved its chips from 65nm to 40nm. Further gains will no doubt be made by the time the 450mm fabs go live, further enabling what looks like will become a multi-core revolution in the near future.

The three companies are hoping to create a smooth transition to the new wafers by working together on the new standards. The overall attitude is that the change is necessary to keep the industry efficient and profitable. Not only will it benefit them in the future, sharing the cost of research and development will certainly keep their accountants happier until then.

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quote: Moving from the current 300mm to the planned 450mm platters will save more money, more energy and cause less pollution overall, as well as allow the industry to pile more microchips into a single wafer.

In many cases, like exposure and testing and process byproduct waste generation, cost per chip area is the same, in other words cost scales with the number of chips. In other cases, the cost scales up faster than area, such as the energy to move a heavier wafer faster. For a given process particle density, a larger wafer is also more likely to have defective dies, which could ultimately defeat the purpose of increasing wafer size in the first place.